Karunakaran to meet Congress leadership in Delhi

Thiruvananthapuram, June 6 (IANS) Veteran Congress leader K. Karunakaran will be in New Delhi Sunday to meet the party’s national leadership to discuss his grievances, party leaders here said. A top Congress leader said Karunakaran, 90, wanted to tell the party high command about his grievances.

“I am not very sure if he is particularly keen on a governor’s post as was reported in the media here. His supporters after his return to the Congress party in December 2007 are slowly being accommodated by the present state Congress leadership. He wants to speed up things in this regard,” the Congress leader told IANS on condition of anonymity.

Karunakaran has held every political position from that of a legislator - he was elected seven consecutive times from the Mala constituency from 1967 to 1991, minister, leader of opposition on three occasions, chief minister for four terms, Rajya Sabha member for three terms and Lok Sabha member twice.

The only post he has not held in his long political career so far is that of a governor.

Karunakaran is likely to press for a candidate of his choice in the Ernakulam assembly constituency, which has been vacated by K.V. Thomas who has become minister of state for agriculture.

Sources close to him point out that he is worried about the political future of his only son K. Muraleedharan, who was the state Congress president 2001-04.

In 2005, the father-son duo had quit the Congress and formed the Democratic Indira Congress, which they merged with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) the next year.

While Karunakaran returned to the Congress, his son is state NCP chief but is perceived as a political non-entity. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, he lost in the Wayanad constituency, finishing third with less than 100,000 votes.

Karunakaran’s daughter Padmaja Venugopal, who recently returned to the Congress after her shock defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, also hopes he will get her a larger role in the party.